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440
TURKEY
[FINANCE


on the surplus of the revenues assigned to the guarantee of the Anatolian railway collected by the Public Debt Administration, on the excess revenue, after certain deductions, accruing to the government under the “Annex-Decree to the Decree of Muharrem” above described, on the sheep tax of the vilayets of Koniah, Adana and Aleppo, and on the railway itself. The first series (54,000,000 francs or £2,160,000), was duly handed over to the concessionaires in 1903, and was floated in Berlin at 86.4% realizing the sum of £1,868,000. The division of the line into equal sections of 200 kilometres apiece produced at once a somewhat ridiculous result. The little town of Eregli, some 190 kilometres distant from Konia, presented the only excusable locality for the terminus of the first section, and even that place is 90 kilometres distant from Karaman, the last town of any importance for some hundreds of miles on the way to the Euphrates valley, the country between the two towns being desolate and sparsely inhabited. But the Bagdad Railway Company[1] (the share capital of which is £600,000 half paid up), naturally anxious to earn the whole of the capitalized subvention, completed the construction of the entire 200 kilometres. The line was thus continued to a station taking its name from Bulgurlu, a small straggling village four miles away, between which and Eregli there is not a single habitation. But even this did not quite complete the distance, and the line was carried on for still another kilometre and there stopped, “with its pair of rails gauntly projecting from the permanent way” (Fraser, The Short Cut to India, 1909). The outside cost of construction of the first section, which lies entirely in the plains of Konia, is estimated to have been £625,000; the company retained, therefore, a profit of at least 1¼ millions sterling on this first part of the enterprise. In the second section the Taurus range is reached, after which the construction becomes much more difficult and costly. On the 2nd of June 1908 a fresh convention was signed between the government and the Bagdad Railway Company providing, on the same financial basis, for the extension of the line from Bulgurlu to Helif and of the construction of a branch from Tel-Habesh to Aleppo, covering a total aggregate length of approximately 840 kilometres. The principle of equal sections of 200 kilometres was thus set on one side. The payments to the company were to be made in two lump sums forming “series 2 and 3” of the “Imperial Ottoman Bagdad railway loan,” series 2 amounting to £4,320,000, which was delivered to the company on the signature of the contract, and series 3 to £4,760,000. The Bagdad railway must for much time be a heavy weight on the Turkish budget, the country through which it passes—with the exception of the sections passing from Adana to Osmanieh, through the Killis-Aleppo-Euphrates district (that is, the first point at which the line crosses the Euphrates some 600 m. from Bagdad), and to a lesser extent through the plains of Seruj and Harran—being very sparsely populated, while the financial system adopted offers no inducement to the concessionaire company to work for increasing earnings. It should be mentioned that the Bagdad Railway Company has sublet the working of the line to the Anatolian Railway Company at the rate of £148 per kilometre, as against the £180 per kilometre guaranteed by the Turkish government-


Ottoman Railways worked at end of 1908.

 Designation of Main Lines.  Length in
 Miles (including 
branch lines).
Amount
Kilometric
Guarantees.



 Turkey in Europe:—   £
 Oriental Railways[2]  815 Nil
 Salonica-Monastir  137 572
 Salonica-Constantinople  317 620
 
 
 Total European Turkey 1269  


 
 Turkey in Asia:—    
 Hamidie Railway of the Hejaz[3]   932 Nil.
 Anatolian Railway  635 Varies from £270 to £600.
 Bagdad Railway    
  (Konia-Bulgurlu section)[4]   124 £620: Annuity £440; Working Expenses £180.
 Mudania-Brusa   26 Nil.
 Smyrna-Aidin  320 Nil.
 Smyrna-Cassaba  322 For main-line and Burnabat and Manisa-Soma branches the government guarantees £92,400 as half the annual receipts. For the Alashehr-Karahissar extension, there is a kilometric guarantee of £755.
 Damascus-Hama   361 520
 Mersina-Adana[5]   42 Nil.
 Jaffa-Jerusalem   54 Nil.
 
 
 Total Asiatic Turkey  2816  


 
 Grand Total 4085  

Results of 1908 according to the Nationality of the Capital.

 Nationality 
of the
Capital.
Companies or Societies. Lengths Worked. Gross
Receipts
for the
 Year 1908. 
 Guarantees 
paid by
the State
for the
 Year 1908. 
Rents
paid to
the State
for the
 Year 1908. 
 Totals per 
 Companies. 
Totals per
 Nationalities. 
Average
 receipts per 
mile per
 Nationality. 

per
 Company. 
per
 Nationality. 










    Miles. Miles. £ £ £ £ £ £
 Ottoman
Hejaz Railway
Salonica-Monastir Railway
Bagdad Railway
Mersina-Adana Railway
Anatolia—
Haidar Pasha-Angora
Eskishehr-Konia
Hamidie-Adabazar
932  932  150,435  150,435  150,435  161 
137 
938 
129,854  243  129,611     
124  14,578  108,155  122,733     
42  36,400  36,400     
 German 635          841,081  885 
209,105  117,030         
102,570  118,755  552,337     
4,877       
 English  Aidin Railway 320  320  293,104  293,104  293,104  916 
 Austro-German 
Oriental Railways
Salonica-Constantinople Junction 
Smyrna Kassaba and Extensions
 
Damascus-Hama and Extensions
(Rayak-Aleppo)
Jaffa-Jerusalem
815  815  607,619  115,679  491,940  491,940  604 
317 
1,054 
113,505  199,728  313,233     
322  223,643  146,980  1,092,957  1,037 
 French              
             
361  269,934  94,801  364,735     
54  44,366  44,366     
 Various  Mudania-Brusa 26  26  15,039  15,039  15,039  579 










  Totals 4,085  4,085  2,215,029  785,449  115,922  2,884,556  2,884,556  697 
  1. Specially formed by the Anatolian railway group for the execution, which the Anatolian Railway Company guarantees under the Bagdad Railway Convention, of the Bagdad railway concession.
  2. The line from Mustafa-Pasha to Vakarel now lies in the kingdom of Bulgaria.
  3. Constructed and worked by the State.
  4. Extension of Anatolian Railway.
  5. The Anatolian Railway group (German) has obtained control of this little railway, which was originally British.